The foreign hits are usually a mix of Indian companies selling SEO scams, Nigerian princes needing help with a huge inheritance - and a very small percentage of genuine searches from places around the world with the same name as your town/area.
The UK hits from outside your area can be for all sorts of reasons - but if you notice loads of hits from one town for 3 or 4 days straight its probably another window cleaners trying to setup his own website & attempting to copy yours!
You do also get spambots - these just randomly trawl the web searching for email addresses & add you to every viagra mailing list in existence....
Nat, quick hijack and thread bump!
I have Statcounter on my site (thank you) why does my site get so many hits from around the world? Then there are repeat visits from places like Belper and Coalville in this country what are they likely to be?